Return to DC

This was a good weekend of reuniting with Georgetown, though not so much with people from the Class of 2000.

I should probably explain briefly how Georgetown reunion weekends work. Each year, on the weekend after Memorial Day weekend, GU invites all alumni celebrating 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-year, etc reunions back to campus for a reunion weekend. They offer receptions, seminars, and other events that are open to all the classes. Then there are a few events organized for specific classes and/or groups, particularly the class parties on the Friday and Saturday evenings of the weekend.
We arrived on campus around 4:15 pm on Friday, too late to attend a seminar on terrorism being given by one of my former professors, Tony Arend. Bummer because he was one of my most interesting professors. Instead, we stopped by the financial aid office and got a chance to visit with my former boss, Pat McWade, the dean of Student Financial Services. It was great to have a chance to catch up with her, and hear a very little bit of campus politics.

After that, we went to a reception that we had signed up for when we originally registered. I think we paid $10 or $20 each for this thing, and what a mistake. (You’ll see a pattern here soon.) When we got there, only about 5 people were there, and of course we didn’t know any of them. We had a few hors d’oeuvres and each had a drink, chatted with a woman we met from the Class of 1990, then quickly left.

Other than a few Reunion events for which we had registered, and our customary visit to the Brickskeller, we didn’t have much scheduled for ourselves. So, after the reception on Friday night, we had to get ourselves settled where we were staying, then figure out what we were doing for dinner.

We were staying at the home of Pastor and Nancy Wong – the pastor of Washington International Church, which was our church when we lived in DC. Their two children are around my age, so now that they are grown and moved out, the Wong House has plenty of space for guests, and frequently ends up being an informal bed & breakfast. I had made my reservations at the Wong Hotel several months before.

We called the church to find out where Pastor was, and Sara (who is currently serving as church secretary) told us how to find the key to get into the house. We got to the house and the keys would not open the door! We called Pastor’s cell phone and finally figured out that we had the wrong keys. Pastor and Nancy were at their daughter’s house in Maryland, so we decided this was a good opportunity to visit Melodie & Ben and their two little boys, and also get to eat whatever Ben cooked for dinner. (Ben’s parents own a Chinese restaurant so we can always count on some yummy stir fry dish when we visit.)

After spending the evening hanging out with a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old, we were pretty tired, but finally we motivated around 9 pm to head back to the city, drop off our stuff, then get on the Metro to go the Brickskeller.

The Brickskeller is a very popular bar in Dupont Circle in Washington DC. They claim (probably truthfully) to have the world’s largest selection of beers. They have a several page menu of beers from all over the United States and the world. They even have various cider options and other beer alternatives such as Smirnoff Ice. You can see why we go there any time we’re in town.

We met up with several friends from my class at Georgetown. My friend Andrew was the first to arrive, and he told us about how he was recently awarded a Fulbright to study German-Polish border relations, and is leaving for Germany at the end of the summer. Then, my friend Bob and his girlfriend Lesly came, and told us about the house they bought in Takoma Park. (Relatively cheap by Southern California standards, but still fairly expensive related to the rest of the country.) Much later, Katy came to hang out after a wedding rehearsal dinner for another friend from college (in her case, high school). As usual, there is a lot going on in everyone’s lives.

After getting up at 3:15 am Pacific Time, we were pretty tired by the time we got back to the Wong house and went to bed (around 1:30 am Eastern, I believe). But, we had to be prepared to get up early the next day….